Spread the word and save your computer.

Check Plug-ins on your computer to avoid vulnerabilities:

Nutrition...Music and Science

Here is a rap on, "healthy food."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWTYyx6PLZY&NR=1

---Post under development---
More later.

Teaching about Citation in Science: True stories for reflection.

Honesty and integrity, in my opinion, are essential to good science, and, to life in general. Here are some stories related to plagiarism, cheating, and lack of good ethics. As parents and educators and community members and students, we can reflect on these stories and move toward a better world. What follows are true stories. There is also a link to a story on plagiarism n China. Lack of integrity is not limited to one country. Corruption and lack of integrity can be found everywhere.

------------------------

I once had a student that came to me and thanked me for having made her cite works she used in a science term paper. I used to jump up and down in class to get students to pay attention to not plagiarizing. That effort on my part, she told me, saved her college degree. How? Every other paper she had done did not cite paraphrased works. I am not sure if they cited quoted works. One teacher called her on it and failed her, which set off an investigation of all her college papers. She was found to have plagiarized in all of them except the one she did for my class. The college interviewed her and also me on this point.

She told them something to the effect of she didn't plagiarize in my class because I made it absolutely clear that citation was necessary for quotes and for paraphrases. She said that the students all thought I was, "mean," because no other teachers required that. (Note that the college catalog did make that, "plagiarism-no-allowed," point.) She said if the other teacher's had required it, she would have cited.

When the interviewers asked me, I told them how I made a big deal out of proper citation, even though it was science class and not English. Yes, I told them I jumped up and down to make the point and told them they might lose their degrees if they plagiarized, citing the college catalog for the regulation. I understand that the college talked to her other teachers, too, and they hadn't made mention of plagiarism in their classes, as I understand it.

Because of my comments, they decided to give the student a chance to keep her degree. The student was given the chance because the college felt that she hadn't intentionally plagiarized. She had to re-write every other term paper, citing correctly, and turn them in to be graded in the next two weeks, or, fail and lose her degree. I think she had to re-write 8, or perhaps it was 12, papers in two weeks. She did. She managed to salvage her degree. She thanked me. That was appreciated. I was glad Providence College supported honesty in publication.

---------------------------

At ...[a famous high school]..., many students cheated. One I know did not cheat and got a B...what for that school was a low grade. His parents reported the cheating but the cheaters were allowed to keep their "A" grades. The, "B student," was smarter and had more integrity than any of them. He was punished for being honest and knowing the material. The parents were told by the teacher concerned that he was stupid for not cheating. Maybe the teacher should lose her degree and license.

Later, there was a big scandal when all the cheating was discovered by an outside source. It would have been far better if the parents of the honest boy had been heard. Perhaps the scandal could have been avoided.

----------------------------

A graduate student lost her assistantship (funding) [...at a university in the Middle West...] when she wouldn't fudge data to say what a ...[big chemical producer]...wanted her to say. Instead, they gave 2 students, who did not have the credentials to get funded for graduate work, twice the money each, and handed them jobs with [a federal agency] when they graduated. They were able to retire at 45...The honest person is still struggling with a career [black-listed?].

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A [...grant recipient's....] boss took a grant report out of the mail, took off part of the report and replaced it with fudged data on the new "grant report" and left the recipient's signature off. (It was on the original page.) The boss got caught when the award giver called the researcher asking about something written in the report and for the signature, "That's not what was written," and, "I signed the report. I have a copy of it." The funder then asked for a copy of the report. The researcher sent it in, and the boss ended up being caught, and was proven guilty of theft, fraud, and other crimes. The boss kept his job. The researcher lost the job, but, was not accused of anything, and did nothing wrong. The research was honest and good as the researcher had turned it in. The researcher did not know the boss had changed it and left the signature blank.

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"‘There are two kinds of cheaters, those who are not interested in academics but only in money, and those who do not have the capacity to produce,' Jiawen said."

(Source: http://blog.ithenticate.com/2010/10/plagiarism-in-china/, Accessed November 13, 2010.)

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Think, reflect, be honest, and build a better world.

(c) 2010 J S Shipman

Check out reddit on science education

http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/search?q=science+education

Stay current on what's, "Hot," in the reddit on-line community.

"L'endosulfan" 985FM looks at News on Pesticides

---UNDER DEVELOPMENT---

Here's a link:

http://www.985fm.ca/international/nouvelles/des-scientifiques-de-l-onu-appellent-a-l-interdict-39500.html

How can a student combine his or her knowledge of French with the study of science? A program such as the one above gives a good example. Students can use their languages to study various science topics. The above example speaks about a pesticide that affects the human nervous system. Students could read about that topic in their native languages or listen to radio or television programs. Then, students could return to class and share (in the common classroom language) what they have learned. Such discussions can improve science knowledge, build vocabulary and increase understanding of our global connectedness, the unity and diversity of life, and sustainability. Thus, a radio program on a current science topic can be a part of increasing science literacy.

Let's look at, " les polluants organiques persistants (POPs)," or, "Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs)." (http://www.985fm.ca/international/nouvelles/des-scientifiques-de-l-onu-appellent-a-l-interdict-39500.html, Accessed 10-17-2010). What are persistent organic pollutants? Do your students know? Do they matter to them? Do they have anything to do with sustainability? How is the nervous system involved? Where can the students start?

One student has read the Canadian's post at 985FM.ca and brings the topic to class. Other students wonder about the topic. Students in the class speak English, Haitian Creole, French, Korean, Arabic, Spanish and a few other languages, among them Farsi, and Urdu. Can they read about this topic in their own languages? Let's see what we can find. Remind them that journal articles in a new-to-them field will have a lot of words they do not yet understand and they shouldn't worry about all the, "new," words (Source: Reach Reading^TM, J S Shipman).

One student looks for information in Spanish: "pesticidas orgánicos persistentes." The Spanish version of Wiki says,"Un Contaminante orgánico persistente (COPs) conocidos internacionalmente por sus siglas en inglés, POPs (Persistent Organic Pollutants) son un conjunto de compuestos orgánicos fabricado artificialmente por el hombre muy toxicos, que tiene un tiempo de persistencia en el ambiente muy largo. Al ser un compuesto artificial, las bacterias y demás organismos no pueden descomponerlo y degradarlos fácilmente. Muchos tienen efectos acumulativos, ya que se almacenan en los tejidos grasos fijándose en la cadena alimenticia y pueden tener efecto hormonales.," (Source http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminante_org%C3%A1nico_persistente ; Accessed October 20,2010) The Wiki post refers to the food chain, a topic frequently in the learning standards required for the class. This point comes out in the classroom discussion. A result is that the students start to understand that there is relevance to the material studied at school and the, "real world."

Another student decides to look for Spanish journal articles, with real laboratory reports that are peer-refereed by scientists in the authors' field, and finds this web site along the way: http://www2.ine.gob.mx/publicaciones/gacetas/422/convenio.html, an ecology website. Let's see what is discovered in the journal search, however, and explore the ecology site another day. Here's the information the student found on the site and brought in.

Boletín de la Sociedad Chilena de Química

versión impresa ISSN 0366-1644

Bol. Soc. Chil. Quím. v.46 n.2 Concepción jun. 2001

doi: 10.4067/S0366-16442001000200008

PLAGUICIDAS ORGANOCLORADOS PERSISTENTES EN

SEDIMENTOS DE TRES LAGOS COSTEROS Y UN LAGO ANDINO

DE CHILE CENTRAL

RICARDO BARRAL¹*, KARLA POZO¹, ROBERTO URRUTIA¹, MARCO CISTERNAS¹, PATRICIA PACHECO¹, y S. FOCARDI².

¹Unidad de Sistemas Acuáticos, Centro de Ciencias Ambientales EULA-CHILE,

Universidad de Concepción. Casilla 160-C, Concepción, Chile.

²Departamento de Biología Ambiental, Universidad de Siena, Via delle Cerchia 3,

Siena, 53100, Italia.

(Recibido: Septiembre 10, 1999 - Aceptado: Enero 19, 2001)

*A quien debe dirigirse la correspondencia e-mail: ricbarra@udec.cl

Source: http://www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?pid=S0366-16442001000200008&script=sci_arttext&tlng=en; Accessed October 20, 2010)

If we want to have global sustainability, we have to ensure the students and their families understand the topics. An exercise such as this, listening and reading on the topic in native language, then sharing in the classroom language, can help bring the needed knowledge, such as the information on, "POPS," to them. Happy listening and happy reading! Remember to encourage students: Solutions, peaceful ones, do exist to global problems, like pesticide pollution with POPS. One or many of them, even all of them, may provide the answers.

(c) 2010 J S Shipman

W3C announce workshop on Web privacy

W3C is pleased to announce a Workshop on Internet Privacy: How can Technology help to improve Privacy on the Internet?, which takes place at MIT in Cambridge, MA (USA) on 8-9 December 2010. Who we are (e.g. our thoughts, dreams, feelings, DNA sequence), what we own (such as financial property), what we have experienced and how we behave (audio/visual/olfactory transcripts), and how we can be reached (location, endpoint identifiers) are among the most personal pieces of information about us. More and more of this information is being digitized and made available electronically. [Read More:http://www.w3.org/ ]

Here is a workshop well worth attending, if you are able to go.

Say a student found a paper on, "Rotted Wood." What would you do?

"Look, teacher. I want to do my project on rotted wood. I like history and this paper has history."

So, here it is. The student found the paper, "Rotted wood - alga - fungus: the history and life of Prototaxites DAWSON 1859," by Francis M. Hueber.

There might be difficult vocabulary, however, the student interest in this topic will keep him or her motivated. So, what can the student do next and not get discouraged?

Well, a good start is to look at the complete reference and note that down in the project notebook. This helps a student avoid plagiarism and also saves time trying to retrieve references later.

Hueber, Francis M. 2001. Rotted wood - alga - fungus: the history and life of Prototaxites DAWSON 1859. Review of Paleobotany and Palynology. Elsevier. 116:123-158.

At this point, don't worry about the format. Just be sure that all the necessary information to cite is obtained. You can think about style and the citation format to use later. Students should learn, however, that the citation manual is not, "the way my teacher told me to do it." (Author's aside: I have seen so many students coming to college not having heard of style manuals. They come into class and want to do what their prior teacher said without knowing about style manuals.)

Skim the paper and look at the pictures, remembering, "No one knows all the words," (Beinetti, J., 1989. Personal communication). The Beinetti quote is a good one for students to remember to not get discouraged. Continue with the Reach ReadingTM technique. ( For info on this technique, contact me.)

Look at the parts of the paper:

• Title,
• Author,
• Abstract,
• Introduction,
• Brief History
• Materials and Methods,
• Systematics,
• Descriptions,
• Ontogeny of the Sporophore,
• Discussion,
• Conclusion,
• Acknowledgements,
• References.

Is the student familiar with any of these parts? Does it look like a laboratory report or journal articles on laboratory experiments? Can the student link the format into his or her own knowledge and experience base?

Next, attack new vocabulary. Note that journal articles are special so, treat journals as precious. Don't write in them unless you own them. Use a photocopy to highlight any words not known. Remember, until you have read several journal articles in the same field, you may ave many new words. After reading about five articles, however, one starts to get a handle on the vocabulary.

Pause a moment and reflect. Did you (the student) know that there were plant fossils? Had you seen any before?

Let's look at the opening line in the abstract,"The Devonian flora discovered and collected by W. E. Logan in 1843 remained unstudied until 1855 at which time the collections were offered to J. W. Dawson." Hmmm!

"Devonian flora," a student might ask. Well, here's some information you can find on-line about the Devonian period:

http://www.historyforkids.org/scienceforkids/geology/eras/devonian.htm

Here is a sample of information you can find at this link.

Near the end of the Devonian period (360 million years ago), some larger and more complicated plants evolved on land too. These were mainly ferns. Some giant ferns were as big as trees, so that a lot of the land now became covered with thick, tall forests of giant ferns and mosses, and even a kind of fungus that could grow eight feet tall. But the very beginnings of plants with seeds, and even flowering plants, were also getting started at the end of the Devonian period. The Devonian period, like the Cambrian and the Silurian, ended with a crisis that killed off most of the plants and animals that were on Earth at that time.

Source: http://www.historyforkids.org/scienceforkids/geology/eras/devonian.htm. Accessed 9-21-2010.

Another online article discusses the Devonian period, giving more information. For example,

The Devonian Period of the Paleozoic Era lasted from 417 million years ago to 354 million years ago. It is named for Devon, England where the old red sandstone of the Devonian was first studied.
Source: http://www.fossils-facts-and-finds.com/devonian_period.html Accessed 9-21-2010.

Compare that to:

Devonian is named for England's Devonshire area where Devonian Outcrops are common. The Devonian follows the Silurian Period and precedes the Mississippian subperiod of the Carboniferous Period.

Source: http://encyclopedia.kids.net.au/page/de/Devonian_period. Accessed 9-21-2010.

A student might ask about, "Outcrops." What are they? How can he or she find out? A Google image search: http://www.google.com/images?q=outcropping%20Devonian&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi&biw=1280&bih=611 Other ways?


Another quote on plants in the Devonian is shown below:

During the Devonian Period, life on land became abundant and diversified. Plants that emerged during this time period included club mosses, horstails, ferns, mosses, and liverworts. Towards the end of the Devonian, the first amphibians evolved. The earliest known fossil amphibian is Ichthyostega, known by a specimen that was unearthed in eastern Greenland.

Source: http://animals.about.com/od/d/g/devonianperiod.htm. Accessed 9-21-2010.

Click here to link to a drawing of Devonian plants: http://universe-review.ca/I10-68-Devonian.jpg. Maybe the student would like to do his or her own drawing from verbal descriptions of the plants and then compare their idea(s) to the picture linked in this paragraph.

A student at Boston Latin School, Boston Latin Academy or other school studying classical languages migh like the sketch of club mosses and the Greek found here:
http://www.palaeos.com/Plants/Lycophytes/index.html.

Source: http://www.palaeos.com/Plants/Lycophytes/index.html. Accessed 9-21-2010.

Παλαεοσ
Paleos

Greek keyboard source: http://www.michael-robinett.com/language/greek/alphabet.htm. Accessed 9-21-2010.

A student might go to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototaxites. Here is a quote on Prototaxites with a chance for a student to make a difference...A citation is needed:

The genus Prototaxites (pronounced /ˌproʊtɵˈtæksɨtiːz/) describes terrestrial organisms known only from fossils dating from the Silu-Devonian, approximately 420 to 370 million years ago. Prototaxites formed large trunk-like structures up to 1 metre (3 ft) wide, reaching 8 metres (26 ft) in height,^[1] made up of interwoven tubes just 50 micrometres (0.0020 in) in diameter. Whilst traditionally very difficult to assign to an extant group of organisms, current opinion is converging to a fungal placement for the genus. It might have had an algal symbiont, which would make it a lichen rather than a fungus in the strict sense.^{[citation needed]}

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototaxites. Accessed: 9-1-2010.

Note that the first cited article on the Wikipedia post is:

1. ^ ^{a b c d} Boyce, K.C.; Hotton, C.L.; Fogel, M.L.; Cody, G.D.; Hazen, R.M.; Knoll, A.H.; Hueber, F.M. (May 2007). "Devonian landscape heterogeneity recorded by a giant fungus" (PDF). Geology 35 (5): 399–402. doi:10.1130/G23384A.1. http://geology.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/reprint/35/5/399.pdf.


Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototaxites. Accessed: 9-1-2010.

See the name, "Hueber, F. M.?" Are you familiar with that name from the first article discussed in he blog?

Let's look at another quote from Dr. Hueber's article:

Among the fossil plants that were collected by W. E. Logan along the shores of Gaspe [I have to go find the accent for the e---Dr. J] Bay (1843), the most enigmatic specimen resembled a fragment of a small tree.

Source: Hueber, Francis M. 2001. Rotted wood - alga - fungus: the history and life of Prototaxites DAWSON 1859. Review of Paleobotany and Palynology. Elsevier. 116:123-158.

A student might wonder about the meaning of, "enigmatic," and perhaps about what W.E. Logan looked like, and/or where is Gaspe Bay.

Enigmatic...let's check a hard-cover dictionary or get an on-line definition. The student can do that already and should be encouraged to. If he or she hasn't been exposed to dictionary or computer use yet, however, it would be worth introducing them.

W. F. Logan: Here's a link to some information on him. http://ess.nrcan.gc.ca/esic/llf/collection_e.php. There one can find a short biography of anecdotes on Logan's life. You can enjoy that so much and feel like going in another direction (Stigmaria underlining every seam of coal leading to a new idea about where coal comes from). In fact, the student who likes history, from the beginning of this post, might enjoy taking that diversion and incorporating it into his or her project. But, to get back to Logan and the rotted-wood-alga-fungus story, I haven't found Logan's picture yet. Aha!

http://gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/hist/logan/images/logan01.gif

Source: http://gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/hist/logan/images/logan01.gif. Accessed 9-21-2010.

We haven't even got into the heart of Francis M. Hueber's article yet and already there are so many fascinating ideas to capture students' attention(s).

Let's look further. Try your hand at reading the article and we'll come back to it later. Note that we can also find related articles. For example, here is a quote from and a reference to a related article: "Since the first fossil of Prototaxites was described in 1859, researchers have hypothesized that these organisms were giant algae, fungi, or lichens. A recent study by Dr. Linda Graham and her colleagues published evidence in the February issue of the American Journal of Botany that they believe resolves this long-standing mystery," (Source: http://www.physorg.com/news185022458.html. Accessed 9-21-2010.) [See the original article at: http://www.amjbot.org/cgi/content/full/97/2/268: Structural, physiological, and stable carbon isotopic evidence that the enigmatic [emphasis Dr. J's]...
Graham et al. Am. J. Bot..2010; 97: 268-275 ] Can you guess what the organism is thought to be?


Science Literacy Comments: Elementary, middle and high school students benefit from the exposure to journal articles. College, university, including both undergraduate and graduate students, benefit from bridging up to the technical level of reading.

(c) 2010 J S Shipman. All rights reserved.

---to be continued---(in another post, on another day)